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California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) might have helped lead the push to legalize marijuana in the state\u2014but that advocacy didn\u2019t exactly come from a place of extensive personal experience. In fact, beside a \u201ccomplicated\u201d trip to the Grand Canyon involving cannabis, Newsom\u2019s THC teetotaling was so \u201crigid\u201d in his youth that even his father poked fun at him.<\/p>\n
During an interview with Politico, and in a recent memoir he\u2019s been promoting, the governor recognized that he became a somewhat unlikely champion of marijuana reform given his nearly lifelong abstinence. But when he considered the harms and waste of the drug war, he decided to make it part of his political legacy to advance the issue, in part by backing California\u2019s Proposition 64 in 2016 to enact adult-use legalization.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring my last term as lieutenant governor, it occurred to me that if I wanted to shape matters beyond the reach of my office, I needed only to grab the levers of California\u2019s initiative process,\u201d he wrote in his new book, Young Man In A Hurry<\/em>. That included supporting Proposition 63 to place restrictions on large-capacity gun magazine clips and require background checks to buy ammunition, as well as Proposition 64 to end marijuana prohibition.<\/p>\n \u201cCalifornians who had no idea what I did for a living were now referring to me as the \u2018guns and weed dude,’\u201d Newsom, who was one of the first high-profile politicians to endorse legalization even years before voters chose to enact the reform, wrote.<\/p>\n With an expansive email list that became \u201cone of the largest political databases in the country,\u201d the then-lieutenant governor recruited experts to help draft a white paper \u201cmaking the case for legalizing cannabis\u201d and then convened a blue-ribbon committee \u201cto help raise funds and gather signatures.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur messaging for both propositions appealed to common sense,\u201d he said. \u201cCalifornia already had been the first state to legalize the medicinal use of cannabis two decades earlier. Why not take it one step further?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTens of thousands of Californians, the great majority Black and brown, were arrested each year for nonviolent marijuana felonies,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were wasting the resources of cops and judges and taking up space in jails and prisons for cannabis, not to mention pulling families apart and worsening racial inequality.\u201d<\/p>\n But as far as his own personal experience with marijuana is concerned, Newsom told Politico that the only time he partook in cannabis was a \u201ccomplicated story\u201d that occurred during a visit to the Grand Canyon. He was vague on the specifics of the expedition, then pivoted to his role in advancing Proposition 64.<\/p>\n \u201cBy the way, I legalized it in California. That was my initiative,\u201d he said.\u201dIt was the great irony. I was the worst spokesperson. I remember\u2014I\u2019m sort of smiling now reflecting on that.\u201d<\/p>\n Except that one toke down at the grand canyon\u2026. https:\/\/t.co\/6KkXSfcAJZ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Jonathan Martin (@jmart) March 25, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n The governor also wrote in his book about another marijuana-adjacent story that happened when he was in Madrid at 19 years old. A straight-edge Newsom said he was watching Pink Floyd\u2019s The Wall in a private movie room one night when \u201csomeone next to me rolled half a dozen joints and generously passed them around.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI had gotten through my first nineteen years without ingesting a mind-altering drug\u2014so rigid that even my father poked fun at me\u2014and I wasn\u2019t going to start then,\u201d he said. \u201cI used the excuse of not caring much for the movie to head back to my room at the Ritz Hotel. This was our Madrid trip in a nutshell.\u201d<\/p>\n Newsom\u2019s father was evidently a bit more open to experimenting with drugs, at least in a clinical setting. The book describes how, in the late 1950s, the late William Newsom was financially struggling and took advantage of an opportunity to Palo Alto Mental Health Facility where they were paying $200 per day \u201cfor any brave soul willing to submit to experiments that Dr. Russel Lee was conducting with the drug LSD, which was barely known and still quite legal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy father accepted the offer to spend two days under the influence of the psychedelic, during which time he was prompted by the doctors to recite the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins and other \u2018tactile\u2019 verse and to document any relevant insights from the drug on a tape recorder,\u201d Newsom wrote. \u201cIt was not long thereafter that my father divined a fork in the road: a career teaching literature to college students or a career practicing the law. Out of no special ardor, he picked the latter.\u201d<\/p>\n In his book and in the Politico interview the governor also discussed an incident in which he came home to discover his foster brother and some friends smoking cannabis out of a pipe from an indigenous tribe that his uncle gave to him as a gift.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was the nearest thing I had to a sacred possession. It was hand carved out of fine wood, inlaid with granite, and decorated with eagle feathers, beads, and bear fur,\u201d he wrote. \u201cSuli had grabbed it off the fireplace mantle, where I had it on display.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the hell are you doing?\u201d Newsom asked his foster brother, who responded, \u201cWe\u2019re smoking dope, man. Getting high.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI snatched the pipe out of his hands and ran into the bathroom,\u201d the governor wrote. \u201cI tried cleaning the resin from the bowl, but the stain already had become part of the wood. I must have washed and scrubbed the pipe twenty times before I judged it clean enough to return to the mantle.\u201d<\/p>\n Newsom, the term-limited governor who is widely believed to be planning a run as a 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, has continued to defend the state\u2019s marijuana law\u2014and he recently leaned into the issue after President Donald Trump mistakenly called him \u201cpresident of the United States\u201d during Oval Office remarks in which the incumbent otherwise disparaged the Democrat. Playing into the gaffe, Newsom said legalizing marijuana was among the \u201cmany big announcements\u201d his White House was making<\/a>.<\/p>\n The governor\u00a0similarly called for legalization in a separate post mocking Trump<\/a>\u00a0during a federal government shutdown last year, pledging to enact the reform as \u201cleader of the free world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Over his tenure as governor, Newsom has been somewhat selective about the types of drug policy reform bills he\u2019s been willing to sign into law.<\/p>\n For example, in October, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have allowed certain marijuana microbusinesses to ship medical cannabis products directly to patients<\/a> via common carriers like FedEx and UPS, stating that the proposal \u201cwould be burdensome and overly complex to administer.\u201d<\/p>\n Newsom did sign a bill earlier that month aimed at\u00a0streamlining research on marijuana and psychedelics<\/a>.<\/p>\n In September, the governor also signed a measure into law to\u00a0put a pause on a recently enacted tax hike on marijuana products<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, California officials recently awarded\u00a0nearly $30 million in grants for marijuana-focused academic research projects<\/a>.<\/p>\n Image element courtesy of Gage Skidmore<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Newsom Takes Credit For Legalizing Marijuana In California And Discusses \u2018Complicated\u2019 Experience Smoking It At The Grand Canyon<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) might have helped lead the push to legalize marijuana in the state\u2014but that advocacy didn\u2019t exactly come from a place of extensive personal experience. In fact, beside a \u201ccomplicated\u201d trip to the Grand Canyon involving cannabis, Newsom\u2019s THC teetotaling was so \u201crigid\u201d in his youthContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":85678,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85679,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85677\/revisions\/85679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
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\nRead More: Newsom Takes Credit For Legalizing Marijuana In California And Discusses \u2018Complicated\u2019 Experience Smoking It At The Grand Canyon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"